He said, ‘It isn’t the police.’
A tinny horn beeped, and a bright yellow runabout swerved towards them through crackling weed stalks, braked with a hard squeal. Its passenger door popped open and Gail Ann said, ‘Hey girlfriend. Need a lift?’
30. Death Knock
Mangala | 30 July
Skip Williams and his partner Corinda Summerville lived in a suburban development on the eastern side of the city, built on the alkali pan where Vic and his friends had held motorbike races back in the day. Now hundreds of prefab bungalows were strung along a skewed grid of curved roads that he had trouble navigating. Eucalyptus saplings shivering in the wind, tidy gardens of rock and gravel and cactus, a few lawns of the new half-life turf, a green too vivid to be natural.
He drove past the same shopping centre twice before he realised he should turn left instead of right at the Y-junction dominated by a gull-winged church. Skip’s bungalow was at the edge of the development, on a street that ran out into the empty playa. No trees here, drifts of sand along the gutters. There was a police cruiser in the driveway. Vic parked and walked over to it, feeling about two hundred years old in gravity that seemed to have doubled, leaned at the window and asked the uniform if there had been any specific threats or anyone suspicious driving by.
‘I chased off a couple of journalists,’ the uniform said. ‘Otherwise it’s been quiet. I heard it was something to do with a drug crew.’
‘Not everything in this town is drug-related,’ Vic said. ‘It only seems that way. And this is one of our own, so don’t go spreading rumours.’
Lucille Colombier had sat him down and given it to him straight. According to Skip’s partner, Skip had worked late on Friday evening, writing up his assault-with-intent and trying to find out why Danny Drury and Cal McBride had both left town. He’d gone into work on Saturday, too, and come back a few hours later, agitated and excited. He’d packed, kissed his partner and told her he would be back in a couple of days, and left.
According to Lucille, the trigger had been a report of a multiple homicide outside Winnetou, a small town in Idunn’s Valley. Skip hadn’t asked for permission to check it out; instead, he’d booked two personal days and flown straight there. He’d talked to the constable handling the case, had been seen in a café in town. A few hours later, his hire car had been found burning behind a produce-storage shed. Skip’s body was in the boot.
‘It was badly burned, and they aren’t set up for DNA analysis down there, but they found Skip’s wallet and badge, and pulled prints off two of his fingers,’ Lucille said. ‘The county constable believes that either he ran into some bad people, or he was involved with them and had a falling-out. I told him that Skip was an upstanding officer. I hope I’m right, because internal affairs will be going deep into his background. The people of the seventh floor are already looking for someone to blame for this, and who better than a dead man?’
‘The kid was clean. A Boy Scout. If anyone thinks differently let me talk to them. I’ll change their minds,’ Vic said, and meant it.
He asked about the multiple murder. Lucille said that she didn’t have much information. ‘It was on a farm several kilometres west of the town. A serious shootout, vehicles set on fire, five dead. A witness claimed that some kind of laser was involved.’
Vic felt a sudden chill. ‘The ray gun.’
‘My thought exactly. Skip wanted to go out there when he found that the chief suspects in this murder had left town. He told me that they had some quarrel over an Elder Culture site. But it was outside our jurisdiction and he had no evidence, so of course I turned down his request. But then he heard about this shootout.’
‘And thought it had to be something to do with McBride and Drury. I should have known the kid wouldn’t give up on the case,’ Vic said. ‘I should have seen this coming.’
‘We can apportion blame later,’ Lucille said. ‘Right now, we have a man down, and I want his body back before the dust storm hits. Which means in the next couple of days.’
‘Yes, chief.’
It was a punishment. It was a reprieve.
‘No doubt the county constable will want to interview you about Skip’s investigation,’ Lucille said. ‘When he does, you will be polite and cooperative, no more, no less. Remember that it’s his case. Do not get involved. Do not offer assistance. You are going there only to confirm the identity of a fallen officer and to bring him home. Am I understood?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Vic said, knowing that he had every intention of disobeying his captain’s orders.
Now, outside Skip’s home, he asked the uniform who was inside.
‘The girlfriend, one of her friends, the family liaison officer. There was a neighbour, too, but she just left.’
‘What about the CS techs?’
‘They came, they went. This is fucked up, uh?’
‘Beyond fucked,’ Vic said, and with his heart gathering weight in his chest walked up the flagstone path and rang the bell. Feeling the same awful foreboding of every death knock, every interview with raw grieving wives and husbands and partners.
Corinda Summerville was in the living room, curled up in a corner of a sofa. Her friend, another blonde woman around her age and about six months pregnant, sat at the other end. The TV was on, sound muted. TVs were often on at times like this. The anaesthetic quality of television for once being actually useful. Vic sat on an armchair across from the two women. The family liaison officer, an anxiously cheerful young man, offered to make tea and drifted out when no one responded.
Vic got past the awkward bit about how sorry he was. Corinda said, ‘They won’t tell me when they’re bringing him back.’
There were three kinds of bereaved, in Vic’s experience. The angry and baffled. The complete meltdowns. The numbly brisk. Corinda was the third kind, more or less. Haunted and red-eyed but determined, holding it together with a frail dignity.
He said, ‘I’m going down there to sort that out. And I’m going to do my best to find out what happened, too.’
‘I’ll have to tell his parents,’ Corinda said. ‘I can’t decide whether to write a letter or rent time on a q-phone.’
Her friend reached over and squeezed her hand and told her that she didn’t have to worry about any of that now.
She was the self-appointed guardian angel, and didn’t bother to hide her resentment over Vic’s intrusion. He ignored her. He needed to ask some delicate questions, and he had another piece of business to deal with before he flew to Idunn’s Valley.
He said, ‘It would help if I could ask a few questions.’
‘This is all about that ray-gun thing of his,’ Corinda said.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘She’s already talked about that,’ the friend said.
Corinda said, ‘I’ll do anything if it’ll help find who did it.’
Vic led her through it as gently as possible. What Skip had told her before he left. What his mood had been. What he’d said when he called to tell her that he’d arrived. It didn’t give him much and made him feel like a wasteman, and all the while Corinda’s friend was staring at him like a mastiff wondering which limb to rip off first.
He clicked his card on the coffee table, amongst scrunched tissues and tea cups. ‘Anything you remember, even if you don’t think it’s important, you can call me. Any time.’
‘All right.’
‘Or even if you just want to talk.’
‘Bring him home.’ Corinda’s stare was bright and fierce. She was hugging a cushion to death. ‘Do that for me. Bring him home.’